Minister MK Ze'ev Elkin has welcomed the decision to award the Israel Prize to Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, saying, "I congratulate my good friend Natan Sharansky on receiving the Israel Prize for immigration and the ingathering of the exiles, and thanks to the heroic struggle of Natan and his friends for the immigration of Soviet Jewry, the Iron Curtain was broken and more than a million Soviet Jews, including myself, immigrated to Israel."
A native of Kharkiv in Ukraine, the former minister of immigration and absorption added, "There is nobody more fitting than him to receive the prize in the field of aliyah, and I am proud to be a student friend of Natan's for many years."